Succulents and More™

At the end of July, I had the opportunity to visit Micro Paradox , a tissue-culture lab north of Sacramento, with my volunteer group from the UC Davis Arboretum Teaching Nursery. I learned so much that I arranged for a similar tour for the Sacramento Cactus and Succulent Society (SCSS). I expected a fair amount of interest, but I was blown away by how many people actually showed up: 22! Some traveled 1½ hours one-way. SCSS group in front of Micro Paradox building, VP Simran Randhawa on the left under the handicap parking sign Micro Paradox VP Simran Randhawa gave us an overview of what happens in the tissue-culture lab. (I won’t repeat what I already said in my previous Micro Paradox post — you can read it here .) After we finished in the lab, Simran led us through the greenhouses (for young plants just leaving the TC lab) and shade houses (for slightly larger plants being acclimated to the outdoor environment). Micro Paradox has 125,000 sq. ft. of greenhouse and shade house space an...

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know that my partner-in-crime Kyle and I have been working on something big behind the scenes. This post about our 36-hour trip to Santa Barbara in July may have given you some clues. Closeout plants from San Marcos Growers Kyle and I brought home from our trip to Santa Barbara in July So many new plants need room — room that Kyle and I definitely didn’t have. That’s where luck came in. Through sheer serendipity, things fell into place. Our friend Eric, who lives on a large rural property in West Sacramento less than a mile from the Sacramento River, agreed to rent us space in his partially unused greenhouse. That’s where our haul from San Marcos Growers went: But our new space in Eric’s greenhouse isn’t just home to San Marcos plants. Kyle and I have brought over dozens (hundreds?) of plants from our respective backyard “nurseries.” How the heck did we end up with all these plants? Here’s a short video of our stock area with the moth...

Last Sunday my wife and I visited our friend Tim in San Francisco. An accomplished painter, he had an open studio at a space he shares with a few other artists. His studio is a 10-minute walk from the BART station at 24th and Mission. It’s just a few blocks, and yet I saw many succulents in front of apartments, along the sidewalk, in median strips. San Francisco isn’t exactly the kind of climate most succulents thrive in. Typically, temperatures are in the 60s, often lower. Mild for sure, and good enough for a lot of temperate plants, but too cool for many succulents to thrive. But because they need so little, especially regular watering, many city dwellers gravitate towards them. Of course I’m anthropomorphizing, but some of the succulents I saw on the short walk to our friend’s studio looked like they would rather be someplace else. Still, they’re hanging on, providing pops of green where most other plants would struggle. Potted aloes with a few feet of trunk... ...those aren’t commo...